Money is Energy

I was recently reminded of this new-age mantra.

I recall hearing it frequently when my husband and I were immersed in our personal development journey in the mid 2000’s. Most of the success gurus teaching this concept were also trying to sell us more of their programs. One in particular taught his students to live and spend “as if.” On multiple occasions I heard him advise students to spend as if they were wealthy, if they wanted to transform their financial situation (all of his programs also just happened to cost five and six figures). Unfortunately, when you do that, and then find yourself knee-deep in debt, your credit card company wants cold, hard, cash… not your positive, wealth-minded energy.

Quantum Physics

I’ve seen the movies, The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know. I get that according to quantum physics, EVERYTHING is energy. Me. You. My dogs. The keyboard I’m typing on and the desk it’s sitting on. The computer screen I’m looking at. And the bottle of water I’m drinking.

But it’s still hard for me to fully grasp this concept. I often wonder if it’s just me, or if others struggle with this as well. If they’re just parroting what they’ve been taught—what many of us have been taught—because it sounds good, and we want it to be true.

While money may physically be comprised of atoms and molecules just like everything else in this world, how many people really honestly see it as just energy? I’m not saying it isn’t energy, rather I’m questioning whether that fact has anything to do with how money works in our world and in most of our lives.

Case in Point

In my book, Breaking the Spell, I share a conversation I had with my husband when I was lamenting all the money I had invested and lost in my pursuit of success.

After telling me not to feel guilty and being very supportive, Louie said, “Money is just energy.” While I appreciate his support and his helping me see I can’t change the past, I couldn’t resist responding with, “Do you really believe that? Do you really understand what you’re saying when you say ‘Money is just energy’ or is it just something you’ve heard so many times—and it sounds good—so you’re repeating it now?” Nothing against my husband, but he too still gets caught in the grip of money. We’re both working on reframing the role we let money play in our lives. By restating that platitude, he was being a parrot.

Money in the Real World

Just putting good energy in your business probably won’t attract paying clients and pay the bills. You have to be offering a service that people value and are willing to pay for. A few years ago I started a business I was very passionate about. I was encouraged to invest a lot of money in start-up because the Universe would see that I was serious and would reward that emotional and financial energy with clients, and a successful business. I put more money and energy into that start up than I’ve put into any of my successful businesses, yet it failed. What I did not do was research the business idea well enough before launching. And I’m here to tell you that no amount of passion, positive energy, or money will make a bad business idea a success.

The reality is money is something we created to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. It has a face value that the government has assigned to it, and that we all agree to. It goes up and down with the stock market and the real estate market, things we as individuals have little to no control over.

There are a lot of money mantras in our world today.

Money is energy.

Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Money is the root of all evil.

In the end, aren’t they just beliefs?

Do they really impact how much, or how little, money we actually have in our lives? Isn’t that more related to the family we were born into, our own personal drive and determination to get out into the world and earn money? And ultimately the value we place on money?

Before I wrote this blog post, I searched the Internet to see what I could find on this topic. Below are a few of the more interesting, and thought-provoking opinions I found. I’ll reserve my judgment and let you decide for yourself which you choose to believe.

How you think, feel, speak, and act about money affects how money thinks, feels, speaks, and acts toward you.

Attracting more money in your life is a matter of creating positive energy with thoughts and feelings.

Remember, money is nothing more than a substance with energy. You want to make it possible for that energy to freely course through your life. Any negative thought concerning money will create a barrier to that flow.

Now if you put your plastic or paper money in the fireplace, yes you will get some heat energy out of it. But notes and coins are just the representatives of money. Money itself is an abstract; its worth depends on the what the State or economic conditions dictate. It is not energy.

It’s about value and apparent value. Money has an apparent value- given it by the State. It is not energy.

Clearly there are believers on both sides of this argument.

And I suppose my purpose here is what my purpose usually is on this blog… to stimulate thinking and conversation. To question what we’ve been taught and not just blindly accept it. To challenge all the canned mantras and gurus and determine what we each believe as individuals.

I’ve often said that when I started attending personal development conferences and hiring success coaches and mentors, that far too often I checked my brain at the door. I took what was being sold at face value, assuming those teaching knew more than me. In some cases they may have. In many others, they may have just been reteaching what they’d read or been taught. I know for a fact I never studied under any actual quantum physicists!

I encourage all of us to question everything. Just because it’s written in a book, or on a website, or shared from a stage, doesn’t make it fact. Do your own research. Then come to your own conclusions.

Yes, there’s an awful lot of information available on the web. But we must remember, it’s all just someone’s opinion or perspective. Even this blog post is just mine.

I think you hit the nail on the head in the closing paragraphs. That bit about checking yourself at the door.

I personally do believe in the energetics of things. I personally have seen that that space I an standing in, inside myself, makes all the difference in what is happening around me. And I get that it is not about what I consciously want, but what I unconsciously believe I deserve.

In the end, I don’t think it’s about the money – it’s about my self-value. And that is what gets checked at the door when you give over your power to a coach, or anyone. That’s what gets checked at the door whren you know there’s something you want to be doing – but you avoid it out of fear or “what will people think” or whatever the resistance is.

And as you know, Debbie, that I have done that right along with you. I have stepped into that place of ignoring or resisting my inner guidance, making what this other person says, thinks or feels more important than what I think or feel. It’s where I spent most of my life.

My belief on this issue is that it is all a matter of how much I am willing and able to stand in my own value, completely and authentically. Knowing and living what most matters to me. Willing to speak my mind, from a deeply personally peaceful and powerful place. From my very center.

For me, the journey to that center, to fully accept myself, my gifts and my ability to affect the world, is the entire point of why I am here on this earth. And it’s so far from being “selfish”. From that place, I am able to be a powerful force for the loving change I want to see in the world. I am far more likely to stand up for another, when I know and am standing in my own value.

For me, money is an interesting indicator of how I am doing, in my willingness to see myself as a person of value, with gifts that matter. Where am I generous, where am I holding back? With my thoughts, with my money – with whatever. I say this because for so much of my life, the money pattern was constant: I was constantly in a state of just barely enough. Always OK, at the last minute – but that pattern was constant, no matter how much money I made. I have made $500 a month and I’ve had a business where I made $2 million a year and it didn’t matter. The pattern stayed the same. This tells me it is not about the money. It’s about the pattern.

Recently, I have gotten entirely clear about what calls me forward, and always has even when I couldn’t name it: My vision of a world filled with self-actualized people who love themselves, love each other, and love the earth, and act accordingly.

That last bit: Acting accordingly – that’s the key. Knowing what actions are most in alignment to what you truly value, and having the courage to show up and lovingly take those actions no matter what anyone else might think…that is how I would define a peaceful, happy, fulfilling – and yes, successful – life.

And yes – the more fully, congruently and authentically I stand in this space, and take the actions that are congruent with who I am, the more the money flows along with the rest of my energy.

Thank you so much for the excellent question and the opportunity to speak to it, to engage in the conversation.

Scout all you share here so very closely mirrors my own experience!!! You are right on the “money” in my book! Haha. I encourage you to keep what you have written here and use it in some bigger way in your work – you have synthesized what I think alot of us are concluding after very similar bumpy money journeys in an attempt to address the deeply root pattern that you so well describe.

This quote Debbie shared above: “Remember, money is nothing more than a substance with energy. You want to make it possible for that energy to freely course through your life. Any negative thought concerning money will create a barrier to that flow.” Also really hits on what has been my synthesized conclusion… that yet money is a literally energy – but also a physical outer symbol of flow… And not that it is not possible to earn/create large amounts of money without inner aligned flow (because we have all experienced people who have done this) without the inner aligned state of flow it is very hard to sustain over a long period of time in a way that is fueling rather than draining, or that is able to expand in a way that serves both ourselves and others in equally aligned results of greater flow. Aho! 😉

Ahh! I´m so glad that you took time to write about this topic because personally whenever I hear too many persons repeating the same thing I tend to get suspicious about it. I totally agree with you that money may well be energy but like Scout says in her comment I also can relate to the pattern around money being the problem not money in itself.
And acting as if is a bit problematic when it comes to spending money because no matter how positive you are and oozing the right energy, if you spend more than you make you will end up in debt which is exactly what I have encountered in my life.